The sound files of the Pauline Cavilla voiced versions of your London Underground station platforms automated announcements.
Dear Transport for London,
Under the Freedom Of Information Act 2000 i was wondering if i could please request to have the sound files of the older Pauline Cavilla voiced London Underground station platform announcements.
Note that i am not talking about the much newer Elinor Hamilton voiced London Underground station platform announcements that are now used everywhere. So my request should not be confused with these.
The announcements i am talking about are the older Pauline Cavilla announcements that used to be used at a lot of station but were removed about five or six years ago. However at Bayswater these announcements still remain in place and this is the one and only station that still has these. I am guessing TFL forgot to replace them at Bayswater when they did all the other stations. So considering that these announcements are still used at Bayswater i believe this means that you will definitely still hold the sound files.
So please kindly attach all of the sound files for the older Pauline Cavilla voiced London Underground station platform automated announcements.
If you require a direct email address to send the sound files to then my email address is as follows:
peterbooth1972peterbooth1972 AT outlook DOT com
Thank you very much for your help regarding this request.
Yours faithfully,
Peter Booth
Dear Peter Booth
Our ref: FOI-1918-2324/GH
Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 3
September 2023 asking for London Underground announcements.
Your request will be considered in accordance with the Freedom of
Information Act 2000 and our information access policy, and we will issue
you with a response by 2 October 2023. We publish a substantial range of
information on our website on subjects including operational performance,
contracts, expenditure, journey data, governance and our financial
performance. This includes data which is frequently asked for in FOI
requests or other public queries. Please check
[1]http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/transpar... to see if this helps you.
We will publish anonymised versions of requests and responses on the
[2]www.tfl.gov.uk website. We will not publish your name and we will send
a copy of the response to you before it is published on our website.
Yours sincerely
Graham Hurt
FOI Case Officer
FOI Case Management Team
General Counsel
Transport for London
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Dear Peter Booth
Our ref: FOI-1918-2324/GH
Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 3
September 2023 asking for London Underground announcements.
Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of
the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act and our information access policy.
I can confirm we do hold the information you require, however, the only
London Underground announcements we are able to release are the train
announcements for the Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines.
With regards to the London Underground station announcements, and the on
train announcements for other lines, we are not obliged to supply these
audio files as the information is subject to a statutory exemption to the
right of access to information under section 43(2).
In this instance section 43(2) has been applied as disclosure of the
information requested would be likely to prejudice the commercial
interests of TfL and/or the company used to provide the recordings. The
recordings in question were provided to London Underground under a signed
contracts which contained explicit conditions concerning disclosure and
distribution.
These contracts specify that the recordings are solely to be used for the
purpose for which they were created and for broadcast on the London
Underground network only. If TfL were to disclose these recordings in
response to an FOI request, it would constitute an actionable breach of
contract and would be likely to result in a valid legal claim against
London Underground or the license to use the recordings being withdrawn,
which would impose additional, unnecessary, costs. TfL wishes to protect
its commercial interests and ability to participate in future commercial
activity. The disclosure of this information would be to the detriment of
present and future business activities for both parties.
The use of this exemption is subject to an assessment of the public
interest in relation to the disclosure of the information concerned. TfL
recognises the need for openness and transparency within public
authorities and the degree of public interest concerning London transport
announcements in light of the recent disclosure of iBus announcements.
However, in this instance this is outweighed by the damage that would be
done to TfL’s ability to use these recordings and any future contractual
negotiations that may take place regarding the London Underground
announcements.
Please also be aware that we are unable to provide full access to audio
announcements across the London Underground network because of contractual
prohibitions on disclosure which means these are exempt from disclosure in
accordance with section 43(2) of the FOI Act. We do not consider it in the
public interest to breach these contractual obligations for the purposes
of disclosure given that there is limited wider public interest in this
material to support that. Those that we are able to provide can be found
at the link provided.
If you would like access to the audio recordings which are available, we
will require a direct email address in order to create the necessary
permissions. Could you please email us directly with your email address,
citing your FOI reference number, and we can then grant access.
You may find our direct email address at the following link:
[1]https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/transparenc...
Yours sincerely
Graham Hurt
FOI Case Officer
FOI Case Management Team
General Counsel
Transport for London
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Dear FOI,
This is a request for an Internal Review in regards to request FOI-1918-2324/GH and request FOI-2275-2324 which have been made to you recently. You can carry out just one combined Internal Review as both requests are very related and interlinked. So my request here for an Internal Review sort of involves both requests.
I am writing to formally request an internal Review in regards to your response to my request.
I made a request to you on the 03/09/2023 with number FOI-1918-2324/GH and you replied on the 25/09/2023 with your response.
My request can be viewed here:
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/t...
In your response you refused it under S43(2) and stated that the contracts prevented you from releasing them.
Here is your exact quote:
"In this instance section 43(2) has been applied as disclosure of the information requested would be likely to prejudice the commercial interests of TfL and/or the company used to provide the recordings. The recordings in question were provided to London Underground under a signed contracts which contained explicit conditions concerning disclosure and distribution."
"These contracts specify that the recordings are solely to be used for the purpose for which they were created and for broadcast on the London Underground network only. If TfL were to disclose these recordings in response to an FOI request, it would constitute an actionable breach of contract and would be likely to result in a valid legal claim against London Underground or the license to use the recordings being withdrawn, which would impose additional, unnecessary, costs. TfL wishes to protect its commercial interests and ability to participate in future commercial activity. The disclosure of this information would be to the detriment of present and future business activities for both parties."
So in that response you are basically claiming that the contracts prevent you from releasing them.
So i made a new request to you on the 26/09/2023 with number FOI-2275-2324 and you replied on the 18/09/2023 with your response. The purpose of this new request was to get a copy of the contract that you mentioned in your previous request so that i could assess and view the contract to understand if your exemption was correctly applied. So my new request was for a copy if the contract that you referred to in my previous request.
My request can be viewed here:
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/c...
In your response you refused it and stated that you have been unable to find the contract that you referred to in your previous request.
Here is your exact quote:
"We have undertaken an exhaustive search of our records – including in relation to a previous, related request and again now with colleagues in our Corporate Archives team - in an attempt to locate the contract you have referred to but without any success. We have looked through our supplier/contract records as best as we can and have found no records in either our current or legacy file registers of the contract in question. The process of searching for the contract has already taken up considerable resource and we cannot justify the provision of additional resource being diverted from our core functions to work on this request. For this reason we are refusing your request in accordance with section 14(1) of the FOI Act."
So your reply to request FOI-1918-2324/GH and request FOI-2275-2324 completely contradict each other so in one of these two requests i am clearly not being told the truth.
In request FOI-1918-2324/GH you state that you can not release the files because the contracts prevent you from doing so. But then in request FOI-2275-2324 you state that you can not find the contract. So as you can see this really makes absolutely zero sense. You are completely contradicting yourself.
So i would like you to look in to both requests and see which one is right and which one is wrong as it seems somebody must be getting confused or looked at the wrong thing in order to give two contradicting replies.
You say you can not locate the contract and you do not appear to even know which company the contract is with. So i have done a bit of searching online today. It took me a couple minutes of Googling to establish that the contract is with Dammit as i have found two different websites that mention this:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
First Site:
https://www.thetalentmanager.com/talent/76
Continuity Announcer / London Underground platforms / Dammit / Jan 2008 to Dec 2008 / Dammit
PROJECT/PROGRAMME TITLE: London Underground platforms
COMPANY: Dammit
LINE MANAGER:
PROGRAMME LENGTH: Under 30 minutes
GENRE: Factual
SECTOR: Other
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Second Site:
https://sites.gravyforthebrain.com/websi...
2011 London Underground Platform Annoucements
Narration
Dammit
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Both of these sites mention the Pauline Cavilla voiced London Underground platform announcements and mention Dammit and when you look on the website of Dammit it also mentions London Underground too:
http://dammit.co.uk/dammit-ltd-audio-for...
There is also an email on the website for contacting them too:
jay (dot) stapley (at) dammit (dot) co (dot) uk
So you could even contact Dammit directly and ask if they have any issue with you releasing them if you are really unable to find the contract. That would be a simple solution. A quick email to them would confirm if you can release the announcements.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I recommend contacting Dammit and checking with them and maybe they might even still hold the contract and i am sure they can tell you whether or not you are allowed to release them.
I understand that some other announcements like the current newer London Underground station platform announcements voiced by Elinor Hamilton (Sayer Hamilton Limited and the onboard announcements on the S Stock and 2009 Stock and 1992 Stock and 1972 Stock voiced by Sarah Parnell and Emma Clarke (Global Radio Services Limited) may be exempt from disclosure due to the contracts. However regarding the older London Underground station platform announcements voiced by Pauline Cavillla there appears to be no evidence that any contract prevents the release of these announcements. So you can not use S43(2) if you do not even have a contract that prevents the release of them. If you can not find the contract then how can you use S43(2) as how can you be certain that it applies.
I believe that releasing these sound files is very much in the public interest as these announcements are almost obsolete. There is only one station left (Bayswater) with these announcements and i believe that the only reason Bayswater still has them is because TFL forgot about Bayswater when updating the announcements and nobody has noticed yet that Bayswater still has the old voice. So they will probably disappear from the last station (Bayswater) soon too. These files are an important part of transport history and they ought to be preserved before they are deleted and gone forever in to history.
I believe you need to consider the historic importance of this. Especially like i see these announcements will soon be obsolete and it is important that they ought to be released and preserved.
Could you please kindly carry out an Internal Review regarding my requests.
Thank you for looking in to this and i shall look forward to hearing back from you.
Yours sincerely,
Peter Booth
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